I Love Old Dogs

I love old dogs. Maggie was 15 years old last summer when she breathed her last breath at home on her own terms. Suddenly ill, she spent an uncomfortable night between this life and her next. Then quietly her sweet old body was of no use to her anymore and she was gone from me.

What a journey her life was. 11 years ago I got her from an animal shelter where it was clear that she'd been someone's backyard dog. She'd obviously had many litters until the backyard breeders gave up on her and dumped her at a park. They had no clue what a gem she was, to say the least.

She was gentle and sweet from the start. Timid about sleeping inside with me and my other dog, it took six months for Maggie to learn how to play. She took her cues from him on perfect behavior, yet here and there her spunkiness began to grow. She learned to ask for treats on her own and she learned what joy felt like when she ran next to her best buddy.

Soon after I got Maggie, we were all walking in a large park, she took off without me realizing it. After a bit of frantic searching, my other dog helped me find her in an abandoned fruit orchard. Maggie was on her stomach pawing ripe pears into her mouth as fast as she could swallow them! It turned out that Maggie loved all fruit, though pears were her favorite. After that I kept closer track of her and bought her a bag of pears now and then.

Maggie just got cuter as she aged. By her final year she was an only dog I took everywhere and I left her for a while in my SUV with restaurant leftovers in the back. Surely she was too polite and decrepit to get over the back seat to the leftovers. When I returned, she was sleeping sweetly in the back seat just the way I'd left her. Only after I put something in back and glanced at the closed leftover container did I discover her ruse: she'd gutted the meal remains, left the lid in place, then returned to her seat. All I could do was smile and hug her.

Soon thereafter she passed and I thought about Maggie's spunkiness a lot and how lucky I was that I got to know her as an old dog.